The Hated and the Dead

The Arctic Five are the five countries with coastlines on the Arctic Ocean. They are: Canada, Russia, Norway; through Alaska, The United States; and through Greenland, Denmark.

This collection of five countries we will use as a bridge to discussing the geopolitics of one of the world’s least visited, least talked about and least understood regions. Due to its remoteness and its emptiness, the Arctic is an object in World affairs; that is to say, it is a region that has things done to it, rather than doing things or deciding things, itself.

This passivity is deeply unfortunate, given that the future of normal life on Planet Earth depends so completely on the future of a relatively normal climate in the Arctic.

My guest today is Dr Becca Pincus. Becca is the Director of the Polar Institute at the Wilson Center, and conducts regular research on the behaviour of the Arctic States. We discuss the effects of and solutions to climate change in the Arctic, the extent of climate scepticism in today’s Republican Party, the ability for the smaller Arctic countries to affect policy change, and why Donald Trump wanted to buy Greenland off Denmark. 

In a special episode of the podcast, I speak to three former guests about the divergent fortunes and trajectories of the governments in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Russia. 

In Turkey, Erdogan is emboldened following an election victory unexpected in some quarters; in Saudi Arabia, MBS is cautiously reforming the country's domestic and foreign policy in a bid to extend its longevity; in Russia, Vladimir Putin's regime is seemingly on the verge of collapse. 

My guests for this episode are: Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies, Steven A. Cook; New York Times reporter and author of Blood and Oil, Justin Scheck; and Associate Fellow on the Chatham House Russia and Eurasia Programme, John Lough.

Rauf Denktash was the President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus from 1983 until 2005.

Given its crucial geopolitical position in the Eastern Med, Cyprus has been contested by different powers for centuries. In the modern day, this contestation occurs between Greece and Turkey, something compounded by the fact that Greeks and Turks both lived on the island and make up the Island’s two largest ethnic groups. In 1974, following a Greek-backed coup on the island, Turkey annexed the Northern half of Cyprus, and established the Republic over which Denktash presided for more than two decades.

Like Kosovo for Serbia, Cyprus poses a cautionary tale for nationalists, teaching them that they shouldn’t fixate on a piece of land that they will never be able to fully control. The Cyprus that Denktash believed in only ever existed in his mind, as he found out in 2003, when he opened the gates between Turkish and Greek Cyprus. To his astonishment, the people he had expected to throw themselves at one another in another episode of sectarian violence merely looked at one another, and carried on.

My guest today met Denktash many times, and is a true authority on Cyprus, having lived there for many years. He is James Ker-Lindsay, a visiting professor at LSEE, a London School of Economics research centre on South Eastern Europe. James also has a popular eponymous YouTube channel with over 100k subscribers, where he discusses various international conflicts and disputes. He is also due to move back to Cyprus very soon. 

Khorloogiin Choibalsan was the leader of Communist Mongolia from 1939 until 1952. Known as "The Stalin of the Steppe", his life changed in 1933 when he agreed to become Stalin's lackey under the threat of execution for supposed collusion with Japanese spies.

This led Choibalsan to execute three percent of the Mongolian population in Purges commensurate with Stalin's. His career offers a fascinating insight into the character of Stalin, and also poses an interesting question as to how small countries such as Mongolia often have to settle for partial independence, if they wish to be free at all.

My guest today is Christopher P. Atwood. Chris is a professor of Mongolian and Chinese history at the University of Pennsylvania, and has spent is career studying the Mongolian language and history. He also recently translated The Secret History of the Mongols, a semi-mythical account of the life of Genghis Khan, and the oldest surviving work in the Mongolian language. 

James Callaghan was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between 1976 and 1979. He is also the only person to have held the UK's four Great Offices of State: Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, and Prime Minister. 

This episode is the next in the "Rather Less Horrible" Series, where my guest and I discuss politicians less unpleasant than most of the others on the podcast, but whose careers still hold important lessons. 

Callaghan's time in power is a lesson in collective leadership; having kept his Labour Government together in a time of high inflation, low growth and strikes. Rishi Sunak, who faces similar challenges, would do well to take note of this prime minister somewhat forgotten in modern British politics. 

My guest today is a particularly special one given our subject; she is James Callaghan’s daughter, Baroness Margaret Jay. Margaret had a unique perspective on her father’s long political career, and also later served as a minister in the Tony Blair government. 

Amfilohije Radović was Metropolitan- a high ranking position in the Orthodox Church- of Montenegro and the Littoral from 1990 until his death in 2020. 

Amfilohije was a member of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which also wields considerable influence in Montenegro. Serbia and Montenegro were joined in federation until 2006, when Montenegro voted to become an independent country. 

He was one of the key figures in a cultural conflict intrinsic to Montenegrin politics: should the country be a loyal ally of the Government in Belgrade, perhaps ruled by it directly, or should it govern its own affairs? 

Amfilohije was never coy about expressing his own opinions on this matter, and in 2019 led nationwide protests which saw the country elect a pro-Serb government the next year. Montenegro might be in NATO, it might be negotiating to join the EU, and it might have a veneer of a pro-Western place, but its place in the Western fold is by no means guaranteed. 

My guest today is Ljubomir Filipović. Ljubomir is a Montenegrin political scientist who focuses on foreign influence and information integrity. He is frequently invited onto global media channels to discuss developments in the Western Balkans, and works with the Atlantic Council of Montenegro and the McCain Institute. 

Muhammadu Buhari served as the President of Nigeria between 2015 and 2023, having left office three weeks ago. Buhari is a longstanding character in Nigerian politics, having run for President five times, and led the country as a military dictator in the 1980s. 

The administration of Nigeria is made almost impossible by the intertwined issues of ethnic, linguistic and religious division, corruption, terrorism, poverty and population pressures. By the standards of Nigerian politicians, Buhari came to power with relatively good intentions to reform the state, and did not engage in the corrupt activity that ensnared so many others. 

But did he succeed? Given the challenges facing any Nigerian politics, was success, however defined, possible at all? That is the question at the heart of today's episode. 

My guest today is Ufuoma Egbamuno. Ufuoma is a Nigerian journalist who currently leads the Nigeria Info newsroom. He reports and tweets (@foskolo) on a wide range of subjects outside politics, including popular culture and sport. 

Dragan Čović is one of the most powerful politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Bosnia's political system, the most complicated anywhere in the World, is designed to give the country's three ethnic groups- Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats- equal representation in government. This sounds reasonable- until one considers that Croats only make up 15% of the population. Čović is the man who has, for over twenty years, manipulated the political system to extract benefits for the Croats. 

My guest today would wager that the Bosnian Croats, who are Catholic, are much more powerful than the Muslim Bosniaks, who represent half of the country’s population. Worse still, he sees Čović, and the Bosnian Croats, as an instrument by which the Western powers keep Christians in charge of one of the only Muslim majority countries in Europe. 

My guest today is Reuf Bajrović. Reuf is the Vice President of the US-Europe Alliance in Washington D.C, and a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was also the Bosnian Minister for Energy, Mining and Industry in 2015. 

Christopher Hitchens was an Anglo-American writer, journalist, literary critic and essayist.

Not a thinker who one can characterise easily, the one thing linking all Hitchens’ writing and his utterances- he was a formidable debater- was his opposition to totalitarian thought. This often sparked controversy- especially his views on Islam and his support for the War in Iraq- but for all the descriptions of him as a shallow contrarian, the authenticity of his opposition to totalitarian ideologies cannot be denied.

My guest today is Alex O’Connor. Alex is the founder of the Cosmic Skeptic YouTube channel and associated blog and podcast, where discusses issues principally related to ethics and religion. As well as Hitchens' life and work, we discuss the future of religion in Britain and the wider Western World. 

Józef Piłsudski was the founding father of modern day Poland, and the country’s most significant political figure from its formation in 1918 until his death in 1935.

Initially a committed democrat who wished to see a Poland free for ethnic minorities to live in, Piłsudski eventually decided that his fellow Poles were not enlightened enough to accept his vision of a free and multi-ethnic Poland, and ruled effectively by decree after 1926.

But Piłsudski’s story is much more than a simple case of fledgling democrat turned dictator; indeed, his leadership of Poland reveals the centrality of the country to developments in Europe throughout the interwar period. All people know of Interwar Poland is its invasion by the Nazis in 1939, but there is much more to it than that.

My guest today is Joshua D. Zimmerman. Joshua is an associate professor at Yeshiva University in New York, where he holds the Chair in Holocaust Studies and East European Jewish History. He is also the author of Jozef Pilsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland.